15 Best AI chatbot platforms for 2024

Chatbot platforms are on the rise and have rejigged how businesses approach customer service. Thus, they aren’t fancy add-ons but essential tools for companies aiming to enhance customer interactions. Tracing its inception in the 1960s, chatbot technology has evolved rapidly. It has transitioned from simple scripted interactions to sophisticated AI-driven conversations. Fast forward to the modern business realm, customer demands for fast communication, amenities, and customer service are set to boost the chatbot market size to US$22.4 billion by 2030, growing 22.5% from 2024 to 2030. Today, AI chatbot platforms for customer service offer advanced capabilities, allowing businesses to extend instant and 24/7 support along with personalized responses to customer inquiries, significantly improving user experience and operational efficiency.

This blog will explore the world of chatbot platforms, their meaning, importance, and numerous benefits. It will highlight the key aspects to consider when choosing AI chatbot software and the best chatbot platforms on the market and discuss everything an enterprise has in mind before investing in a chatbot platform. Understanding these facets allows you to select the right chatbot platform to elevate your business’s customer service automation strategy.

Related must-reads

• 6 types of chatbots – How to choose the best for your business?
• 9 Best chatbot examples for business in 2024
• Enterprise chatbot – Types, benefits and examples
• Recruitment chatbot – Ways to use for recruitment process

What is an AI chatbot platform?

An AI chatbot platform is a sophisticated software service that enables businesses to create, deploy, and manage chatbots to simulate human-like conversation. By leveraging advanced artificial intelligence technologies, these platforms facilitate interactions over various channels such as websites, mobile apps, messaging platforms, smart speakers, and IVR systems. The core of AI chatbot platforms is often driven by Natural Language Processing or NLP and Natural Language Understanding or NLU) allowing the software to discern and interpret human speech, text, and intent accurately.

A chatbot platform is a service or software that empowers businesses and individuals to design, launch, and oversee chatbots for various applications. These chatbots are computer programs crafted to replicate human conversation, engaging with users through messaging apps, websites, or voice assistants. By utilizing AI chatbot platforms, companies can streamline customer interactions, lower response times, and improve overall service efficiency. A recent Userlike study found that 80% of users had interacted with a chatbot, with 5.5% uncertain. This percentage indicates the growing importance of chatbots in customer service automation. 

For example: An online retail business uses an AI chatbot platform. During its website visit, an existing buyer or a potential customer asks the chatbot about the availability of a product; the chatbot understands the query through NLU technology. It then searches the inventory database and responds with accurate information about the product’s availability, pricing, and delivery options. This lucid interaction improves the customer experience through instant, precise responses without human intervention.

Benefits of using an AI chatbot platform for customers and business

The benefits of an AI chatbot platform are many. It enhances customer service efficiency, personalizes user interactions, ensures 24/7 availability, and supports multiple languages, providing an exceptional user experience. Customers benefit from fast, tailored, and omnichannel interactions, enhancing satisfaction.  Likewise, it offers a plethora of advantages to the enterprises leveraging a chatbot platform. From delivering outstanding customer service, driving operational efficiency to scale up without spending a fortune, the perks of an AI chatbot platform are many. 

Chatbot benefits for customers

Let’s have a look at the advantages of chatbots for customers!

Chatbot platform benefits for your business

By integrating an AI chatbot platform, enterprises can transform operations, achieve significant cost savings, enrich customer service quality, and drive sales. In addition to these benefits, the data curated by such a platform helps businesses stay competitive. 

15 Best AI chatbot platforms for customer service

Yellow.ai

Drive personalized experiences with Yellow.ai’s generative AI-powered, no-code chatbot platform. It helps businesses from across sectors improve customer satisfaction, sales, and operational efficiency. With advanced AI bots available in 135+ languages and 35+ channels, Yellow.ai is trusted by 1100+ global enterprises. Yellow.ai  is an ISO, HIPAA, SOC 2, and GDPR-certified platform that ensures privacy, security, and compliance across enterprises. Thus, you are assured of data security and protection against cyber breaches. 

IBM Watsonx Assistant

IBM Watsonx Assistant is a premier enterprise-level chatbot platform designed to enhance customer service through sophisticated AI and large language models. This platform excels in learning from customer interactions to boost issue resolution efficiency and minimize wait times. Unlike traditional chatbots, Watsonx Assistant can access knowledge bases, seek clarifications, and escalate to human agents, making it a versatile solution for various environments, including cloud and on-premises setups. By implementing it, businesses can significantly enhance customer engagement and operational efficiency.

Key features:

• Agent assistance: Supports human agents by handling routine queries.
• AI integration: Leverages AI for improved customer understanding.
• Enhanced security: Ensures robust protection of customer data.
• Visual builder: Allows easy chatbot creation without extensive coding.
• Voice capabilities: Integrates with telephonic customer support systems.

Freshworks

Freshworks’ chatbot platform is an integral part of its live chat software. It is designed to streamline customer service through AI-powered self-service and seamless integrations. This platform helps businesses create a unified and efficient workflow, offering customizable chatbot templates to tailor the experience to specific needs. Freshworks chatbots are known for their affordability, making them an attractive option for enterprises seeking cost-effective solutions. By leveraging Freshworks’ chatbot platform, businesses can personalize customer interactions.

Key features:

• No-code chatbot builder: Simplifies chatbot creation without coding.
• AI-powered Chatbot: Enhances interactions with intelligent responses.
• Pre-built templates: Provides customizable templates for various use cases.
• Real-time resolutions: Ensures quick resolution of customer inquiries.
• Custom reports and visualizations: Offers detailed insights and analytics.

Tidio

Tidio’s chatbot platform is designed to cater to business needs such as sales, support, and customer service through a range of AI-powered chatbots. By leveraging custom automation, Tidio enables businesses to accelerate growth and streamline customer interactions, instilling confidence in its efficiency. This platform enhances engagement and simplifies lead generation and qualification through automatic processes, ensuring you can focus on other important aspects of your business.

Key features:

• No-code chatbot builder: Facilitates easy chatbot creation without coding skills.
• AI-powered chatbot: Enhances customer interactions with intelligent automation.
• Lead generation: Automatically collects and qualifies leads.
• Seamless integrations: Connects with various business tools for efficient operations.
• Comprehensive analytics: Provides insights to improve customer engagement.

Chatbot.com

Chatbot.com is an advanced AI chatbot platform that offers a fast and efficient way to create customized artificial intelligence-driven chatbots using pre-designed templates. This platform is ideal for enterprises starting their chatbot journey or those needing quick deployment. Chatbot.com allows easy customization with a user-friendly dashboard, helping businesses across various industries enhance their workflows and productivity.

Key features:

• Pre-designed templates: Quickly create chatbots with customizable templates.
• 24/7 support: Provide round-the-clock customer assistance.
• Smart problem resolution: Improve customer service efficiency.
• Scalable solutions: Grow your business without increasing overhead.
• Lead generation and qualification: Automate lead generation processes.
• Integrations: Connect with various tools for streamlined chatbot building.

Intercom

Intercom is a sophisticated AI chatbot platform that enhances customer support, sales, and marketing interactions. Known for its versatile range of products, Intercom offers custom chatbots that integrate seamlessly with e-commerce and social media platforms. This platform helps businesses by providing personalized, high-quality customer engagement at scale, making it an essential tool for proactive lead generation and support automation.

Key features:

• No-code bot design: Allows quick creation of chatbots without coding.
• Proactive engagement: Starts conversations with qualified leads using advanced targeting.
• Social media integration: Integrates conversations from social media channels into CRM.
• High-quality personalized help: Delivers tailored assistance at scale.
• E-commerce and platform integration: Connects with various business and social platforms.

Kore.ai

Kore.ai offers a comprehensive AI chatbot platform designed to enhance customer, employee, and agent experiences across various industries. This platform’s no-code and low-code approaches empower users to create and customize intelligent virtual assistants (IVAs) without extensive coding skills. Kore.ai supports over 120 languages and channels, offering a versatile solution for businesses striving to improve customer interactions and streamline processes. Its adaptability and comprehensive features make it an apt choice for enterprises seeking to enhance their service capabilities and operational effectiveness.

Key features:

• No-code and low-code development: Create and customize chatbots without extensive coding.
• Multilingual support: Supports over 120 languages and channels.
• Advanced dialog management: Enhances natural language understanding (NLU).
• Integration with large language models: Improves AI capabilities.
• Robust security and compliance: Essential for sectors like banking and healthcare.

Google Cloud Dialogflow

Google Cloud Dialogflow is a chatbot development platform that leverages Google’s advanced NLP technology to develop intelligent conversational agents. This platform integrates seamlessly with popular messaging services like Facebook Messenger, Slack, and Google Assistant, offering SDKs and APIs for custom channel integrations. Dialogflow enhances business interactions by providing sophisticated tools for understanding and interpreting user queries.

Key features:

• Advanced NLP capabilities: Understand and interpret user queries accurately.
• Multi-platform support: Facilitate both voice and text-based interactions.
• Agent-building tools: Create conversational flows and manage intents effectively.
• Google Cloud services integration: Extend functionality with broader Google Cloud services.
• Machine learning capabilities: Enable continuous improvement and training of chatbots.

SAP Conversational AI

SAP Conversational AI is a sophisticated AI chatbot platform for seamless enterprise integration. This platform provides a robust bot-building environment, enabling the creation and customization of chatbots through low-code development. It excels in automating customer support, IT services, and purchasing processes, offering a comprehensive digital assistant experience across various SAP products. With its advanced natural language processing (NLP) capabilities, SAP Conversational AI facilitates humanized conversations in multiple languages. Despite its transition to maintenance mode, SAP Conversational AI remains a valuable tool for enterprises.

Key features:

• Advanced NLP capabilities: Support human-like, multilingual conversations.
• Enterprise integration: Seamlessly integrates with SAP and third-party solutions.
• Automation of customer support: Streamlines customer service processes.
• IT service automation: Enhances IT support efficiency.

WotNot

WotNot is a premier AI chatbot platform that offers a comprehensive range of conversational AI marketing solutions across more than 16 industries. Its no-code chatbot builder allows businesses to quickly create and deploy intelligent chatbots using customizable templates. This platform combines the benefits of automated bots and live chat tools to enhance sales and support, with seamless human intervention when necessary. WotNot chatbot software is ideal for enterprises seeking to swiftly implement robust and flexible chatbot solutions.

Key features:

• No-code bot builder: Build bots instantly with a simple drag-and-drop interface.
• Chatbot to human handover: Enables human agents to take over conversations as needed.
• Chatbot analytics: Provides insights into bot performance through KPIs like top countries and intents.
• Conversation transcripts: Saves chatbot conversations and email transcripts for sales and support teams in real time.

Drift Chatbot

Drift Chatbot is an advanced AI chatbot platform designed to enhance lead generation and streamline sales processes. Initially known for live chat, Drift has evolved to integrate chatbots that engage website visitors, qualify leads, and schedule meetings seamlessly. This platform helps businesses by facilitating real-time conversations, improving lead qualification, and automating the scheduling process, making it a worthy tool for sales teams. This AI chatbot software is ideal for companies enhancing customer engagement and streamlining sales operations.

Key features:

• Immediate website engagement: Increases the likelihood of capturing contact information.
• Integrated chatbot and live chat: Offers a cohesive customer interaction experience.
• Wide range of integrations: Connects with various business tools.
• Real-time conversations: Engages visitors instantly.
• Drift Automation: Quickly answers questions and automates tasks.

Landbot.io

Landbot.io is an advanced AI chatbot platform enabling businesses to create rule-based and AI-powered bots for seamless customer interactions. This intuitive tool allows enterprises to build high-quality dialogues and generate leads through its easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface. Landbot.io supports human agents taking control of conversations in real-time, ensuring a smooth transition between automated chatbots and human assistance. 

Key features:

• Initiate dialog flows: Test and analyze chatbots effortlessly.
• Seamless integrations: Connect with various online apps and tools.
• Real-time human takeover: Allow human agents to jump into conversations.
• Personalization: Customize chatbots with brand elements.
• Multi-platform support: Create chatbots for various platforms.

LivePerson

LivePerson is a robust AI chatbot platform that empowers businesses to seamlessly build, deploy, and optimize AI-powered chatbots. This platform excels in leveraging advanced analytics for real-time intent detection and continual optimization. LivePerson enhances communication flexibility and provides rich live chat features, ensuring a superior customer experience and efficient interactions.

Key features:

• Custom pre-written statements: Develop and send predefined messages in chat.
• User-friendly interface: Intuitive for both users and new employees.
• Enhanced customer experience: Features like hyperlinks and canned responses.
• Advanced analytics: Optimize chatbot performance with real-time data.
• Real-time intent detection: Understand and respond to customer intents accurately.

Chatfuel

Chatfuel is a specialized AI chatbot platform designed for Facebook Messenger. It enables businesses to leverage natural language processing (NLP) to identify intents and provide predefined answers. This platform excels in storing user data, allowing enterprises to re-engage customers effectively. It is an ideal tool for enhancing customer interactions and streamlining communication on Facebook Messenger.

Key features:

• Action and activity management: Efficiently manage chatbot interactions.
• Chatbot analytics: Gain insights and integrate with third-party tools.
• NLP capabilities: Identify customer intents and respond accurately.
• Data storage: Store user data for future re-engagement.
• Multilingual support: Supports 50 languages for broader reach.

Engati.com

Engati is a platform for chatbots that utilize conversational AI to assist businesses in enhancing the customer experience. It allows for omnichannel consumer experiences by integrating chatbots with live chat. Engati is a free platform that lets users create bots without having to learn how to code. They can then share their bots with others on 12 different platforms, such as WhatsApp, Messenger, Kik, and Telegram. 

Key features

• Multi-linguistic support: Engati’s AI chatbot supports over 50 languages.
• Advanced integration: Businesses may boost revenue using Engati’s advanced integrations.
• Omnichannel: It lets users deploy chatbots on Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook.
• Live chat: It automates 24/7 customer, employee engagement.
• Artificial intelligence: Its AI chatbot platform provides easy and quick AI creation.

Key aspects to consider when choosing a chatbot platform

Selecting the right platform requires carefully considering your needs. Among many other aspects, a business must consider chatbots platform’s primary features such as AI capabilities, integrations, omnichannel support, usability, security, scalability, and deployment options. Similarly, there are different types of chatbots and one must evaluate them. These key aspects ensure that you choose a platform that meets your current requirements and supports future growth and technological advancements. With the right chatbot platform, your enterprise can achieve its customer service objectives.

1. Understanding your needs

 You need to identify the primary goals for implementing a chatbot platform. Are you aiming to improve customer service, drive sales, or gather data? Understanding your specific requirements ensures you pick a platform that aligns with your business objectives and delivers the desired outcomes.

2. AI capabilities

The best chatbot platform should offer advanced AI capabilities, such as machine learning (ML) and NLP. These features enable the chatbot to accurately understand and respond to complex customer queries, improving the overall user experience and ensuring efficient resolution of issues.

3. Effortless integrations

A robust chatbot platform must integrate seamlessly with your existing systems, such as ERP, CRM, and other enterprise software. This integration empowers the chatbot to access and utilize relevant customer data, ensuring personalized interactions and a smooth transition between automated and human-assisted services.

4. Omnichannel support

AI chatbot platforms should provide omnichannel support, letting you engage with customers across various channels, including live chat, websites, mobile apps, calls, social media, and messaging apps. This capability ensures a consistent customer experience and maximizes your reach across different platforms.

5. Ease of development and use

Choose a chatbot platform that offers an intuitive development environment and user-friendly interface. This ease of use enables your team to create, deploy, and manage chatbots efficiently, reducing the need for extensive technical expertise and accelerating time to market.

6. Security and scalability

Security is non-negotiable when handling customer data. Ensure the chatbot platform employs robust security measures, such as encryption and regular security audits, to protect sensitive information. Additionally, the platform should be scalable, allowing it to handle increasing interactions as your business grows.

7. Deployment options

Consider the chatbot platform’s deployment options. Whether you prefer on-premises, cloud-based, or hybrid solutions, the platform should provide flexible deployment models that align with your IT infrastructure and business requirements.

Future of chatbot platforms

The future of chatbot platforms appears promising, with significant market growth and advancements in features and capabilities. The average conversational AI investment by businesses is likely to reach $18.4 billion by 2026. Likewise, by 2030, it is expected that chatbots will become integral to every industry as consumer demand for 24/7 customer service continues to rise. Businesses set to chatbot platforms for customer service and support can expect a range of new developments in the overall technological capabilities and features over the next 5-6 years. Here is a brief overview of possible developments:

Technological advancements and enhanced skills

•  Chatbots will use natural language processing and have enhanced humanized conversations and interactions.
• Machine learning will boost chatbots’ ability to learn and break down information from interactions and open-source data.
• Chatbots will help businesses communicate through tailored, efficient, and AI-driven conversations.
• Chatbots will improve customer experiences and operations by developing sophisticated problem-solving, flexibility, and emotional intelligence.
• Chatbots will leverage cloud-based NLP engines to enable user interaction with online services via text, live chat, voice, images, and task modules.

Chatbot platform: Key takeaways

As we come to the end, let’s have a quick recap. The key takeaways of chatbot platforms include exploring the definition, historical development, and evolution. You also learnt about the benefits of adopting AI chatbot platforms, such as improving customer engagement, reducing operational costs, enhancing service quality and more. There are insights into critical features to consider when choosing a chatbot platform, including advanced AI capabilities, seamless integrations, and robust security measures. Moreover, we highlighted the top chatbot platforms for businesses in 2024, showcasing their functionalities and advantages.

As time passes, AI chatbot platforms will further boom with advancements in natural language processing and machine learning, offering unprecedented levels of personalization and user interaction. If one observes a specific region, the North American chatbot market is expected to grow 26.6% from 2023 to 2028.  Businesses must act now to integrate these technologies to deliver unparalleled customer service. Investing in the best chatbot platform is no longer optional but imperative for maintaining a competitive edge. AI chatbot software will revolutionize customer engagement, streamline operations, and provide critical data insights, making it a vital component of modern business strategy.

Chatbot platforms – FAQs